World Happiness Report

Natalia Maldonado

2025-01-20

Data Sources and Collection Process

Sources

The data used in the World Happiness Report is derived from:

• Gallup World Poll: Provides survey responses from over 150 countries.
• World Bank: Supplies economic indicators like GDP per capita.
• World Health Organization (WHO): Offers health-related data, such as life expectancy.

Data Collection Process

• Surveys: Respondents answer a series of questions about their lives and perceptions.
• Economic and Health Data: Collected from global institutions to complement survey responses.
• Standardization: Data is adjusted for comparability, such as converting GDP to purchasing power parity (PPP).
• Key Calculation: Combines survey results and external indicators to compute the Happiness Score.

Data

Happiness Data
Country	year	LogGDP	SocialSup	HealthExp	Freedom	Generosity	Corruption	PosAffect	NegAffect	Region	OriginalGDP
Bulgaria	2023	10.272790	0.9349162	66.7	0.7543243	-0.13129753	0.9478562	0.5394388	0.1918842	Central and Eastern Europe + CIS	33403.376
China	2023	9.860808	0.7969825	69.0	0.7933784	-0.03157096	NA	0.7079852	0.2103501	Asia	22137.600
Colombia	2023	9.666558	0.8332084	69.7	0.8234711	-0.14246459	0.8702267	0.7541034	0.2854169	Latin America and Caribbean	18692.385
India	2023	8.919471	0.6328966	61.5	0.8996010	0.12088692	0.7698518	0.6987651	0.3885257	Asia	9160.064
Iran	2023	9.650888	0.8094789	66.9	0.6154001	0.25360298	0.7642531	0.5333526	0.4246328	Middle East and Africa	16154.000
Luxembourg	2023	11.648711	0.8791953	71.7	0.9108133	0.03343977	0.3432108	0.7507005	0.1944953	NorthAmerica + ANZ +Western EU	132846.574

Happiness Score Data
Country	Happiness	year
Afghanistan	1.7210	2024
Afghanistan	1.8590	2023
Afghanistan	2.4038	2022
Afghanistan	2.5229	2021
Afghanistan	2.5669	2020
Afghanistan	3.2033	2019

Variables

• Ladder Score: Self-reported happiness on a 0–10 scale.
• Log GDP per Capita: Adjusted economic output per person adjust for PPA (log-transformed).
• Social Support: % of respondents with reliable friends or family.
• Healthy Life Expectancy: Expected years of healthy living.
• Freedom to Make Life Choices: % feeling free to make personal decisions.
• Generosity: % donating money to charity recently.
• Perceptions of Corruption: Trust in public institutions (inverse).
• Dystopia Residual: Captures unmeasured influences on happiness.

Map

Map

• This is an interactive map that allows users to explore happiness levels by country.
  
• Users can zoom in and focus on specific countries to see their happiness indicators, making it easy to analyze and visually compare global differences.
• Happiness levels are clearly distributed geographically: Northern regions, such as Western Europe and North America, show darker colors representing higher happiness, while Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Central Asia display lighter colors.

Distribution of Happiness

Distribution of Happiness

• Western Europe and North America have higher concentrations toward the upper end (6+).
  
• Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are more concentrated toward the lower scores.
  
• Nordic countries, known for their economic and social stability, dominate the higher positions.
  
• Countries facing conflicts or significant inequality, such as those in Africa and parts of Asia, are more present in the lower extremes. This shows a strong regional component in reported happiness.

Score Top and Bottom

Top and Bottom Scores

• Among the highest-scoring countries, Israel stands out. Despite its high happiness score, its Positive Affect score is not as high as expected.
  
• In contrast, countries like Congo, ranked at the bottom of the happiness list, show a higher Positive Affect score compared to Israel.
  
• This highlights a disconnect between daily positive emotions and overall reported happiness scores.

Correlation

GDP vs Happiness

Correlation: GDP vs Happiness

• Latin America and the Caribbean stand out by consistently appearing above the trendline, showing they are happier than their economic levels suggest.
  
• In contrast, some regions with high GDP levels, such as the Middle East, do not necessarily have happiness levels corresponding to their wealth.
  
• This highlights that cultural and social factors can be more important for well-being than economic metrics alone.

Distribution possitive Affect

Trend: Distribution of Positive Affect

• Latin America leads in Positive Affect, reinforcing its standout position in the GDP vs Happiness correlation.
  
• Other regions present interesting patterns:
  • Western Europe shows more moderate Positive Affect but higher happiness scores.
    
  • Sub-Saharan Africa has high Positive Affect levels despite low happiness scores.
    
• This suggests that daily emotions don’t always align with overall perceptions of well-being.

Conclusion

• Measuring happiness is more complex than it seems, as a direct question may oversimplify what “being happy” truly means.
  
• This analysis reveals that daily emotions (Positive Affect) and reported happiness are not perfectly aligned. For example:
  • Congo shows high Positive Affect but low happiness scores.
    
  • Israel shows the opposite.

Conclusion

• Happiness depends not only on what we feel daily but also on social, cultural, and economic factors that shape how people perceive their lives overall.
  
• This project aimed to explore these interactions and highlight that understanding happiness requires looking beyond numbers, focusing on the stories data can tell.